Twenty-one performances sold-out at Forest National. Well over 2 million albums sold. Twenty years after Starmania, Luc Plamondon,  without Michel Berger but with Richard Cocciante, has  people rushing in droves to the front steps of Notre-Dame de Paris. This  monumental show, looming like a smaller version of the film Titanic on the French musical stage, is  based on Victor Hugo but a Victor Hugo pretty close to Spielberg. 

The story of Notre-Dame de Paris,  as told by Luc Plamondon and Richard Cocciante, reminds us of the story of those guys who all wanted to date the same girl. Well, put like that, it kind of reduces the impact, and turns Victor Hugo’s novel, on which the show  is based, to a mere half-episode of Friends. So what. 

If you take, as a starting point, the fact that Victor Hugo wrote his novel  like the kind of popular saga you see on TV in summer, you can understand why it  triggers such general enthusiasm. But it does not completely explain the craze for  Notre-Dame de Paris. The success of this musical comedy is completely unexpected and defies understanding, given the present musical trends in France. Furthermore, the romantic plot etched out by the authors  actually loses out to the gossip surrounding the cast. 

If the story-line of Notre-Dame de Paris (the show)  isn’t all that obvious,  everybody now knows that Daniel Lavoie is married with two children and that Patrick Fiori is the fiancé of Lara Fabian! It is also public knowledge that Hélène Ségara had to learn her part at the last minute to stand in for Noa; that  every night Garou attracts  hordes of groupies too old to besiege bands such as 2B3, that Bruno Pelletier has  as many female fans as all the Chippendales put together and rumour has it that Julie Zenatti gets on very well with Luck Mervil but not all that well  with Hélène. Unbelievable! 

Lights shining  through  stained glass and motorways 

Since  September 16th, 1998, date of the premiere at the Palais des Sports  in Paris, the seven unknown artists have turned into super-stars whom everybody wants to see on stage (we’re talking over 500 000 tickets in Paris) in a musical comedy mixing the sacred, the pagan, pop kitsch inherited from Hair and the holy whiff of mass. A blend of religious references and incitement to infidelity as made  abundantly clear in the hit song Belle «O Notre-Dame! Oh!  let me, just once, open the door of love inside Esmeralda’s»! What an atmosphere! It’s all about the  physical passion which is at the heart of the action,  a passion bathed at times in stage lighting reminiscent of church stained glass windows  and, at other times, of the crude glare of urban motorways . Even if Plamondon and Cocciante open the libretto in 1482, they  add a few  items  straight out of the latest news. The Court of Miracles is replaced by an Association for the Defence of illegal  immigrants  demanding «right of asylum» in Notre-Dame. 

The alarm warnings - echoed  on the TV evening news - about such raucous events  are as completely ignored now, as they  were at the time, by the three obsessed  heros who are too busy tearing each other to pieces ( «caress me with one hand, torture me with the other!»). Three heroes  who, in the normal course of events, should have had nothing to do with Esmeralda. Had they  done just that, the whole thing would have sunk – I mean,  there would have been no musical!

Quasimodo, the ugliest man in Paris, isn’t even in the running, Frollo, the priest has, in theory at least, taken vows of chastity and Phoebus is already accounted for, he is engaged to Fleur-de-Lys. God is  present all the while, sometimes being begged for help and sometimes for forgiveness. A whole series of scenes shows that being tortured at the wheel and  being chained in a cage is the price to pay for daring to love a gipsy girl. «There’s a demon inside her who came from hell»,  who suddenly seems to «bear  the cross of   all our human sins». 

An updated Middle-Ages

At a time when the French are trying to break into the musical market  with new  music styles ( the french touch  in electronic music  or a new type of minimalist French song), it’s Notre-Dame de Paris, as a studio album, a live album and singles, which is a best seller and is fancied by the general public. How can you explain such an interest for  this monumental gothic opera which stages the picturesque side of the Middle-Ages through pious imagery and clichés? It’s an up-dated Middle-Ages, in a re-colorised, high-tech version, quite close to Victor Hugo’s vision. In his lengthy novel, he  showed a marked predilection for aesthetic bias and  historical excess. He  stands out  as a kind of Steven Spielberg of XIXth century romantic literature. In fact, Luc Plamondon and  Richard Cocciante are  very much in tune with him, their vision perpetuates the excesses of this medieval  gipsy tale, which has already  been adapted many a time to the stage or to the screen.

Each of the three most significant adaptations of Notre-Dame de Paris, is a faithful reflection of its  own time. Jean Delanoy’s 1956 film, with Anthony Quinn and Gina Lolobrigida in the respective parts of Quasimodo and Esmeralda. Roland Petit’s choreography  towards the end of the 60’s and a  Disney studio recent cartoon The Hunchback of Notre-Dame. 

So, why  this popular success, worthy of a small-scale Titanic ? Why  such a show, which, let’s repeat it,  is not in keeping with French musical show tradition,  a tradition which has  always  ignored  the success stories from Brodway in New York and  from the West End in London? From West-side Story to Evita, not  to forget the blockbusters of Andrew Lloyd Weber – the master of the genre – Phantom of the Opera, Cats, Jesus Christ Superstar, Sunset Boulevard. Maybe there is no explanation, except that of a fan who summarises everything in a few words : «Notre-Dame uses all the tricks needed for music to send shivers down your spine and that’s that». In the end, it’s much simpler than  you thought. Take note. The show can start. At least for those lucky enough to have got a ticket.

Copyright © [ Daniel Lavoie: official website]